


I ain't afraid of no ghosts

by faecallie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, I don't know what I'm doing okay?, I just think they could be great once he pulls his head from his ass
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 09:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13186992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faecallie/pseuds/faecallie
Summary: Kylo's first meeting with Rey following Crait does not at all go how he expected it would.





	1. Chapter 1

  
  


The first time he sees Rey since Crait does not go how he expected it would. 

 

He’d been sleeping. Sleeping rather well, in fact, now that he didn’t have Snoke pushing nightmares into his head every night. And then came the pull. Yank would be more accurate, he thought as he sat up to take in Rey before him. His eyebrows instantly shot up at the sight before him.

 

She’s sitting pressed up against a wall, it looks like. Her staff is in her hands pointed at something threateningly, trying to keep whatever it is at a distance. Her eyes were wild, her breathing erratic. He calls his saber to his hand without thinking. This fearless girl was suddenly afraid and that’s a good of a reason as any to make sure he’s armed, even though he can do nothing about it from his room on a ship across the galaxy. 

 

Her eyes meet his as she finally registers his presence and before he could even breathe to speak there’s another yank. It’s much stronger than the first, which had been different enough. He feels her reach for him in the Force. Curiosity has him letting her, but when she reaches him, she  _ grabs _ .

 

He’s shocked when the dull shine of the black surfaces in his room suddenly morph into one of the cabins on the Falcon. He can see more than just her now, surprised by the strength of her pull. But the surprise fades the second he sees what she is so afraid of. He thumbs the ignition on his saber and grabs her arm, pulling her behind him from where he now sits on her bed. She adjusts quickly, squeezed between him and the wall, keeping her staff firmly between her and the very exasperated looking ghost of Luke Skywalker. 

 

He just stares at his uncle, his heart rate climbing as he fights off the memory of another bed, another night with sabers between them. He can feel Rey trembling against his bare back, her frantic breath making a spot on his shoulder uncomfortably warm. 

 

“Can-” she pants, “Can you see him too? Are ghosts real?”

 

“I see him.”

 

His uncle frowns at them. “This is not what I meant when I said I’d see you around you know.” Kylo just glares at him, his spare arm reaching behind him in a vain attempt to comfort Rey.

 

“Ben are ghosts real?” She asks again frantically. 

 

She’s genuinely terrified he realizes. He can feel her, just there at the edge of his mind where she holds him, quite prepared to just take the information from him like he’d accidentally taught her if he doesn’t answer quickly enough. He’s almost proud of her ruthlessness. 

 

“In a manner of speaking yes. Only Jedi Masters who have been taught how can become one with the Force and maintain their individuality and memories after death.” 

 

“So I’m not going crazy?” Her staff lowers a bit where she has it extended next to his own saber. 

 

He sighs, deactivating his own. A saber will do nothing against a ghost. No matter how much he wishes it could. Actually getting to kill Skywalker would certainly make up for interrupting his first meeting with Rey since she shut that door on him “No. you’re not crazy.”

 

“Snoke isn’t going to show up is he?” “No Rey.”

 

“Rey I didn’t mean to startle you.” His uncle says carefully, his eyes continuously flicking between him and the girl behind him.

 

“Well you bloody did. I felt you die! And then I look up and you’re-” she pauses, frantically looking for words. “You’re just bloody THERE!”

 

“Maybe return another time Skywalker.” He says smiling through his teeth at the man before them. He feels her drop her staff and clutch onto his bicep as her head falls forward against the back of his shoulder. “She clearly doesn’t wish to speak with you at the moment.”

 

Luke rolls his eyes. “Yeah I can see that.”

 

“Ben, can I make him go away?” he hears quietly from behind him.

 

“She calls you Ben? You  _ let _ her call you Ben?”

 

Kylo ignores his uncle, trying to turn to face her, but she shifts with him, holding his arm even tighter, shaking her head against him. He relents for the moment. “Leave Skywalker. Go bother someone else.” 

 

He sees his Uncle sigh again and the blue of his presence begins to fade. He almost starts to relax, but if flares again just long enough for Skywalker to speak one more time. “Don’t stay kid, the effort is going to kill her like it did me.” And then he was gone. 


	2. Chapter 2

She slumps more heavily against him the second his uncle’s presence fades from the Force and Kylo quickly turns the second her grip loosens. She falls almost limply against his front now, head rolling against his shoulder as sweat begins to pour off of her. For once in his life, his uncle is actually right, he can feel her brightness dimming with the effort she’s expending to hold him here in this place. 

“Rey let go.” She shifts enough to glare at him from the corner of her eye and weakly drops her hands from his arms. He wants to smile at her misunderstanding, but he’s far too concerned with her life. It occurs to him that he should probably be letting her die, but discards the thought as soon as it forms. It would be a waste, he tells himself, that future together can still come to pass. But not if she dies from something this stupid. 

“No, you pulled me here, I can see the room, I could see Skywalker. I can’t leave, you’re not letting me. Let go.” He’s hesitant to try and pull away under his own power. Scavengers tend to cling what little they have tightly. Fighting her hold would only make her try and hold tighter.

She struggles slightly against him trying to shift to look at him better and he turns her so she’s lying in his arms more comfortably. She’s too pale. “I don’t know how...” He wants to sigh again. She really needs a teacher, now more than ever. He focuses instead on her Force, feeling where the edges of it cling tight to his own. 

“Close your eyes, breathe, and focus. Feel it, you know where to look for me in your head.” And he knows she does. Neither of them had ever intentionally interacted with the link between them before she had pulled him here, but it wasn’t something either of them were capable of ignoring either. He felt her response in the Force, slow and sluggish, carefully withdrawing the death grip she had on his mind. Just as slowly, the room around him starts to fade away back to his own until it’s only her he can see again. 

Interesting, he thinks, that seeing her doesn’t cost either of them a thing in terms of energy, carefully filing away the knowledge that they can create these connections intentionally if need be. She lies still in his arms, slowly catching her breath, her heart rate slowly calming. He can feel her exhaustion like a weight around them. Curious, he carefully feeds some of his own energy to the link, and is pleased to feel the aura of the Force around her strengthen in proportion. 

She groans suddenly, “Do you have to be so academic about this all the time?”

He blinks down at her, color returning to her cheeks as she stares at him with mild irritation. Kylo quickly suppresses the urge to ask exactly how she knew what he was thinking, since he isn’t hearing her. He does notice that she doesn’t try to remove herself from him yet though. “Forgive me, but this is the most fascinating thing I’ve ever encountered in the Force. I think it bears examination.” She just huffs at him, closing her eyes and squirming more comfortably into his embrace. Kylo is… well he is confused by her.

“This is really not how I thought our next meeting would go.” he says down to her.

“Can’t say I would have expected this either. Ghosts are real. Who knew?” she says with a sigh, opening her eyes to stare up at him again.

“Well I did.” he says before he can think not to. She simply rolls her eyes at him and continues staring. He can’t think of anything to say either and just stares back.


	3. Chapter 3

He should have a billion things to say. He should be trying to either kill her or convince her to come to him, not just holding her while she calms down from what was basically a panic attack. 

She’d left him. She’d chosen the Resistance over him and everything he had to offer. He’d killed his Master to save her life. He should be angry. But he isn’t. He isn’t angry and he cannot for the life of him understand why. 

Mostly, he decides, he’s just unsettled. Now that his immediate concern has passed, the memory of Skywalker standing over him with a saber lit in hand starts trying to demand his attention. Of all his nightmares, that had always been the one that got under his skin the most. He hates that while not identical, she had experienced something similar. Though her fright was certainly a surprise, so he lets it distract him. 

“I can’t believe after everything, it’s a ghost who scares you.”

She looks at him with that vaguely irritated way he’s beginning to learn she has. “A little over a week ago, I was nobody from nowhere. I think I’ve handled it all quite well. But there has to be a line somewhere, and ghosts are mine.” she says stubbornly. He vaguely feels an impression of her thoughts, the loneliness that makes the idea of ghosts far more frightening to an alone child than they should have any right to be. 

“Still though. You can stand before me, stand before Snoke, and I never felt you afraid of us. Afraid for your life, afraid for the lives of others, yes; but not of the two most terrifying men in the entire galaxy.”

She snorted, shifting again in an attempt to get more comfortable. “You’re not exactly terrifying. And Snoke in the end was just a broken old man.” 

“A broken old man with the power to crush you with a thought.”

“No he couldn’t.” Again, all he could do was blink down at her in confusion. “He may have been able to take Luke’s location from me, but I was starting learn how to fight him off. That’s why he decided that I needed to die I think.” 

This girl, he thought, was always surprising him. He’d had Snoke in his head. He knew the agony of trying to fight him. But, he supposed, maybe she was just unafraid of the pain. Jakku had taught her there were worse things to fear than something as simple as pain. “And me? Despite everything you are not afraid of me. Instead you called me. You were afraid and it was me you called to hide behind.”

Her expression doesn’t change. “I am afraid of you.” 

His heart seizes in his chest. He starts to move to let her go, but her arm flies up and her hand cups his face, turning it back to hers. “I’m not afraid of what you’ll do to me though. Fighting is one thing, we can do that easily enough. It might even kill us someday. What I’m afraid of is what you might make me do.” 

Again, he doesn’t know what to do with that. Killing her is fine, but something else is not? His confusion must show, because she sighs, dropping her hand tiredly. “You make me feel not alone. Do you realize how important that is to me?” He thinks he does. “I may hate what you do and hate what you chose to be, but you’re the first person to ever come when I call. I’ve never had anyone I could turn to before.” He ignore the burn of building tears in his eyes, desperate to not let anything show that her words were destroying him. “I’m afraid-” Again she paused, voice catching in her throat as her own tears started to come. “I’m afraid of what I’ll do to keep this feeling. I’m afraid of what I’ll give up of myself just so that I won’t be alone anymore.”

Kylo doesn’t know what to say to that at all. He doesn’t know what to do with her at all. This girl is quickly consuming him, he realizes. Kylo, Ben, or whatever mixture of the two he is, neither know how to deal with the emotions she drags from him. It’s too much. His hands are shaking with the urge to do something, to pick up his saber and absolutely destroy something, so that this energy will abate. It’s too much. It’s too much and he wants to die so he doesn’t have to face it. 

But still he just sits there in his bed, her weight in his lap, her head against his shoulder as she just stares at him as though she hadn’t just blown every thought out his head except ones of her. He speaks without thinking.

“No reason to be afraid of me for that apparently. You left. You tried to take the lightsaber to attack me again. Hoping to kill me, or just give me a new scar to remember you by?” he spits at her, though his arms tighten slightly against her, still desperate for her to stay. 

Despite that though she shoves against him, finally sitting up, pulling away and sitting squarely before him, her anger rising to meet his own. “That’s why I’m afraid though. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to take your hand!” She’s almost yelling at him. Her words are constant knives stabbing the shrivelled remains of his heart, but she doesn’t stop even to let him bleed, he thinks idly. “But I can’t chose you over the lives of others! Finn was down there! BB-8 was down there! Your mother was down there! You may be in my head but that doesn’t mean there aren’t other people in this galaxy that I care about!” 

“Oh yes, the lives of people you’ve known all of less than two weeks? People who have been failing the galaxy long before you or I were even born?”

“I only met you less than two weeks ago too. And despite whatever this is Snoke made between us, I’m not someone who can standby and watch people die!”

“Snoke didn’t do this.” That stops her short.

“What?”

“The connection between us was not Snoke. If it was it would have ended with his death. I’m sure that he did meddle with it while it was too new for either of us to notice, causing what we forged between us on Starkiller to allow us this, but he did not create it.” 

She just looks at him. This conversation is jumping around too much for her too it seems. “You’re sure he’s not a ghost too right?”

“Reasonably. Acceptance of death isn’t something the dark side of the Force specializes in.”

“Could you do it?”

“I have no idea. I know the theory, but I’ve never died, so I can’t exactly test it.” She smiles at him and he ignores the way it makes his heart turn over in his chest.

“How does it work?” Her curiosity knows no bounds, he thinks.

“I doubt we have time for an entire lesson on something far beyond your current abilities.”

She frowns. “We have been here quite a while. Aren’t these usually quite short?”

Kylo frowns as well. She’s right. The connections are usually just a few minutes at most. And as if on queue, she vanishes before him.


End file.
